Pre-School Child (2-5 years)

by
Shahla Arshad
Lecturer
K.M.U Institute Of Nursing Sciences
 OBJECTIVES

 Discuss Piaget’s pre-operational thought stage , Language ,

development and Play(Cognitive Development).

 Describe Erikson’s Stage of Psycho Social Development

initiative vs. guilt stage (Personality Development).

 Discuss Influence of peers in personality development.

 Explain Stage of psychosexual development.

COGNITION
Cognition is "the mental action or process of acquiring
knowledge and understanding through thought, experience,
and the senses."It encompass processes such
as knowledge, attention, memory judgment , evaluation, rea
soning , computation, problem solving , decision
making, comprehension and production of language, etc.
Human cognition is conscious and unconscious, concrete or
abstract, as well as intuitive and conceptual.
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT:
Changes that occur in mental skills and abilities over time.
ADAPTATION
Cognitive development occurs thorugh this process.
Two facets of adaptation
 Accommodation
 Assimilation
ASSIMILATION
 Children interpret new experiences based upon their present
interpretation of the world.
 Child assimilate past experience, Past experience tells child
to use one hand to grab large ball because it worked with
rattles and smaller objects
ACCOMMODATION
 Adjustments or modifications in the thinking process that
will become a part of a child’s new cognitive development .
 Child accommodates new information
Child is unable to grasp the ball with one hand.
He accommodates by using two hands.

Adaption = Assimilation + Accommodation

 Preoperational Stage (2–7 years)
• The word operations refers to logical, mental activities thus, the
preoperational stage is a prelogical stage Children can
understand language but not logic.
• Symbolic thought

• Centration

• Irreversibility
• Animism

• Egocentrism
• conservation
• Symbolic thought - ability to use words, images, and
symbols to represent the world.

• Centration - tendency to focus, or center, on only one

aspect of a situation, usually a perceptual aspect, and ignore
other relevant aspects of the situation.

• Irreversibility - child cannot mentally reverse a sequence

of events or logical operations back to the starting point

• Animism- This is the tendency of the preschooler to attribute

human like trait or characteristic to inanimate object.
Egocentrism
• The child’s inability to take another person’s point of view
– Child on the phone says, “See the picture I drew for you
Grandpa!” and shows the picture to the phone.

Conservation
• An understanding that certain properties remain constant
despite changes in their form
• Lack the concept of conservation - which holds that two
equal quantities remain equal even if the appearance of one
is changed, as long as nothing is added or subtracted
• The properties can include mass, volume, and numbers.
 PLAY
 Functional play.
This type of play is a sensorimotor approach in which a child learns
the nature of his or her surroundings. Such examples include
dumping, filling, stacking, water play, and outdoor play
 Constructive play
Describes children combining pieces such as with blocks. The
purpose of this type of play is to make something and/or work out a
problem
 Dramatic play
The child pretends to be someone else, for example the teacher or a
Doctor . This type of play does not require any social interaction with
other children.
 Games with rules
Encompass cooperative play, often with winners and
losers. These games are distinguished by child-
controlled rules. Children begin the games with rules
stage at about age 5.
 Erikson’s Stage of Psycho Social
Development- Initiative vs. Guilt stage
 Initiative versus guilt is the third stage of Erik Erikson's
theory of Psychosocial development . This stage
occurs during the preschool years, between the ages of
three and five.
 During the initiative versus guilt stage, children begin to
assert their power and control over the world through
directing play and other social interaction.
 Children need to begin asserting control and power over
the environment by taking initiative by planning
activities, accomplishing tasks and facing challenges.
 During this stage, it is important for caregivers to encourage
exploration and to help children make appropriate choices.
Caregivers who are discouraging or dismissive may cause
children to feel ashamed of themselves and to become overly
dependent upon the help of others.
 Play and imagination takes on an important role at this stage.
 Children have their sense of initiative reinforced by being
given the freedom and encouragement to play. When efforts
to engage in physical and imaginative play are stifled by
caregivers, children begin to feel that their self-initiated
efforts are a source of embarrassment. Success in this stage
leads to a sense of purpose, while failure results in a sense of
guilt.
 Influence of Peers in Personality Development.

 Peers define options available for leisure time.

 Peers serve as role models for acceptable behavior.

 Also provide reinforcement for acceptable behavior and

sanction for not engaging in acceptable behavior

 Peers can encourage fairness and cooperation but may also

encourage aggression, criminal activity, and other
antisocial behaviors.
 Stage Of Psychosexual - Development.

 Sigmund Freud(1856-1939) based his theory of

childhood development on the believe that sexual
energy, termed Libido, was the driving force of
human behavior. He proposed that children progress
through five stages of psychosexual development.
Freud's open discussion of sexual impulses
particularly in children was considered for his time
shocking .
Stage 2: Anal
 Age 18-36 month
 Main site of pleasure/gratification is the anus
 Child is struggling to control bowel/bladder function (toilet
training)
 Key is the struggle for control
 If toilet training is difficult, child may become anally
fixated and may not pass beyond Anal Stage
 In adults, this may manifest itself as Obsessive Compulsive
Personality Disorder
Stage 3: Phallic
 Age 3-5
 Main site of pleasure/gratification is the genitals
 Fear of castration
 Oedipal complex
 Child is in love with opposite sex parent